Towards the National Conference of SYRIZA

by Communist Organization of Greece (KOE), 13 November 2012

(On the left, poster for the central public meeting of KOE that took place in Athens on 26 November 2012)

As we are approaching SYRIZA’s Pan-Hellenic Conference, which will take place in Athens from Friday 30 November to Sunday 2 December 2012, hundreds of local and sectorial popular assemblies are taking place these days all over Greece in order to debate and elect their delegates. Since this process started, after the June 17 elections, SYRIZA has almost tripled its membership – despite the hesitation of certain forces within SYRIZA to adopt the orientation towards its necessary transformation into a broad, popular, democratic force of the Left. Below we reproduce large excerpts of the contribution to the pre-Conference debate, submitted by the representatives of KOE in the outgoing Executive Secretariat of SYRIZA.

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[Non translated: “Introduction”]

At a time of great unrest

Greece and, in fact, the whole region of Southeastern Mediterranean find themselves amidst an economic, political and geopolitical storm. The contradictions between the IMF and the EU (but also between the most powerful EU countries) for the management of the crisis in the South European countries, and their implications for the European banking and financial system, are in full motion. The essence of the confrontation is not whether the burden of the crisis will be loaded on the back of the peoples or not. This, to force the peoples into an unforeseen misery and catastrophe, is the only point of agreement among the powerful of the imperialist directorate. The crucial issue of the inter-imperialist contradiction is how they will make one another bear a part of the damage. In this respect, the greater damage of one side can be considered as a profit for the other.

Motivated by the economic antagonisms, politics return to the forefront. It is not simply the “markets” and the banking giants that impose solutions. The political control over the countries, in a background of geopolitical antagonisms and rearrangements, gains special importance in the planning of the enemy camp. Next to the imposition of economic restructuring, next to the experiments (for global use) carried out in order to test a people’s limits of endurance to “therapies” based on the neoliberal shock doctrine, what is also imposed are the neocolonial policies of modern type. By this, we mean the process of completely “handing over the keys” of a country (in our case, Greece) to foreign forces, which obtain the full control of this country’s productive and natural wealth and of its very geopolitical position.

The attempt to include in the Greek Constitution the economic choices of the German officials, but also Merkel’s statements that “it is impossible, for a country with public debt exceeding 80-90% of its GDP, to maintain its independence”, are very revealing. As far as Greece is concerned, these developments meet with the important geostrategic unrest in the Southeastern Mediterranean and North Africa. The choice of the successive Greek pro-troika governments during the last few years, to speed up the binding of our country to the USA/Israel axis, engenders high risks, as the probability of new military adventures in Syria and Iran is increasing. The pro-USA/Israel choice brings our country in confrontation with traditional allies and friends, i.e. the countries and peoples of the Arab world, and implicates Greece in the global antagonisms aiming at the control of the oil resources and of their ways to the West.

Forming a political current for the political, economic and social way out

[…] SYRIZA, as the main opposition party, can and must have the initiative during the whole next period. An initiative that shall offer perspective, as well as political and organizational solutions, to the multifaceted wave of resistances (but also of “personal” attitudes and behaviors) that will inevitably occur around the efforts for survival – a survival that is put in danger, on a mass scale, by the “Memorandum 3”.

SYRIZA must launch an uncompromising struggle in order to prevent the course towards catastrophe, by imposing a direct recourse to the popular verdict. SYRIZA must transform itself into the basic pole of regrouping of political and social forces, able to lead to a way of rescue and of political, economic and social way out for the country.

At the same time, SYRIZA as a political entity must organize a movement of political disobedience against the illegitimate “extra” taxes, against the selling out of public property, against the destruction of public Health and Education, against the elimination of even minimally regulated labor relations.

Such moves will hold SYRIZA’s doors open for the people in struggle, for the social radicalism, in order to unite with them and build a massive political entity functioning democratically and grass-root procedures. This will be an “open” entity that will express the agony and the needs of the people, an entity capable to throw out the troika, to overthrow the whole domestic political system, and then support a process of transition towards a “breathing open area”.

Such a stance shall not simply be an initiative that will attempt to reverse a possible atmosphere of disappointment. Mainly, at a time when everybody faces the consequences of the implementation of the new measures, this will be a political initiative capable to build, to politically express and to rally into a powerful political current the wave of anger that floodsthe vastmajority ofpeople in this country. Moreover, this will constitute a plan assuring that the initiative is maintained in the hands of the Left and of SYRIZA, limiting the possibilities of manipulation of the radicalism by systemic forces, as the neo-fascist “Golden Dawn”.